Some great replies there guys. You should probably watch the docu to get a sense of what would happen, and how unsettlingly real some of it is. I mean, a neutron star (you're right PAN, that's what it is basically) is NOT, so far as we know, approaching us yet (Come out of your shelter Batlord with all those metal albums and rocker chicks!) but it COULD, and they're laying plans for such an eventuality. I mean, they intend, at some point, to DO this if it needs to be done. Project New Horizon I think they're calling it. What bugs me most about it is that there was not even a smidgeon of discussion about the ethics of polluting space with nuclear radiation in order to provide ourselves a power source. All they were worried about was where would it come from and would we have enough, and could we protect ourselves from the blasts? I mean, three nuclear bombs PER SECOND? Do you have any idea what that is going to do to space? And we're just assuming there's no other life out there: there could be, and we could be endangering or even destroying it. Again, yay Mankind!
Though this would be a totally amazing premise for a TV series wouldn't it? If I had the contacts to pitch it I would; if I had the discipline to write the book I would. I'd see season one the building of the ship, the worry about who gets to go, the thing seen maybe through the eyes of those left behind versus the lucky few, maybe a family could be split up on that basis. Civil war across the Earth as the left-behinders try to wreck the plans to leave. New religions rise, one is called Fatalism and believes it is a sin to desert our planet and that God wants us all to die yada yada.
Then end of season one the ship is launched, Earth dies and for the next few seasons we're in space, facing all the challenges of a city/world in space, with people splitting into factions aboard the ship, law and order trying to be maintained (maybe one of the characters is a cop) and perhaps little wars breaking out across the ship and so on. Eventually the ship arrives and the next seasons take place on the new planet as Man tries to establish his new home.
Man, it could be huge! Where's Spielberg when you need him? Or JJ Abrams?
